The invention relates to a filtering device for plastic melts exhibiting at least one screen plunger arranged in a screen plunger hole movably between an inlet channel and an outlet channel of a housing and containing replaceable, three-dimensional filter elements, whereby the inside of the filter element is connected to at least one melt channel formed in the screen plunger, said melt channel being connected to the inlet or outlet channel of the housing when in the production position.
Such a filtering device is known from DE 44 20 119 C1. Although it has been successful, housing and screen carrier plungers are specially matched to each other with regard to the inlet and outlet openings of the melt channels, such that it is not possible to place the also known screen carrier plungers into the housing when they exhibit screen surfaces with an onflow perpendicular to the longitudinal axis. In particular, filtering devices with such screen carrier plungers exhibiting screen surfaces with an onflow perpendicular to the longitudinal axis cannot be converted to operate using a screen carrier plunger with cartridge filters as known from the aforementioned patent document.
In addition, it has been observed that maintenance and cleaning of the known filtering device is very time-intensive.